Gingerbread and reflections: Colleen Gregoire captures the abstractions light forms in water and glass

Reflections and transparencies draw artist Colleen Gregoire into a luminous geometry lifted from houses and water.

The Placitas artist is returning to that passion in “Colleen Z. Gregoire: Upon Further Reflection,” open at Wild Hearts Gallery through June 23.

Gingerbread and reflections: Colleen Gregoire captures the abstractions light forms in water and glass

Gregoire grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, where she developed a life-long love for the landscape. Painting plein air (outdoors), she studied the changing seasons around the Flint Hills and the surrounding farmland. The porches and verandas of the 19th and 20th centuries beckoned. Experiencing New Mexico through a newcomer’s eyes provided a new energy to her oil paintings.

“I’m reviving a theme I’ve done in the past,” she said, “doing reflections or studies of windows — not being a peeping Tom!”

Gregoire walks and drives around the Albuquerque area to discover the abstractions light forms in water and glass.

She enjoys the irreverent qualities of chairs seeming to float on a reflected porch.

Architecture and light have proven a long-term interest.

“I lived in an older neighborhood when I was establishing myself as an artist,” she said. “My husband and I lived in a restored Victorian house.”

She walked around that neighborhood, searching for angles, gingerbread and reflections, a tradition she has continued.

“I would take quick photographs from the sidewalk and keep moving,” she said.

“I get the basic spatial elements in,” Gregoire explained. “I do everything with a brown under paint for value study, and then I paint over it. It’s an old Renaissance trick. It’s probably because light is an important subject matter.”

Soon, fans began commissioning her to paint their homes.

“I think some people were surprised when they saw their front window in a show,” Gregoire said.

Today, she asks permission. Many New Mexico homes aren’t as accessible to her, thanks to walls, fences and gates.

“Mid Day Shadows on the Rockers Porch” is a composite of several homes, with the Gutiérrez Hubbell House in the window’s background.

“Burque Sunrise” emerged from a day in the Bachechi Open Space, gazing at the mirrored surface of a naturally occurring acequia.

“Shoreline” is a plein air study of reflections on the bosque with the languid reflections of the cottonwood branches. “Lavender Reflections” captures a Victorian window embellished by stained-glass and the requisite porch chair.

Gregoire is drawn to the structure of the architecture she places in her paintings.

“You get a little cross-eyed sometimes,” she said, “but it’s training your eye to focus on one layer at a time.”

Back in Lawrence, Gregoire’s mother provided her with notebooks, paints and markers from the time she reached elementary school. She began private lessons with a local teacher.

“It was really basic training,” she said. “You had to do drawings at first. Then we were introduced to watercolor. Some of those techniques I still use today.

“Even at an early age, it was an urge; it was a need.”

Gregoire taught at the University of Kansas and at Baker University before cutting back to raise a family.

“I stepped away from a desk job at United Way,” she added. “I wanted to be more of a mom and an artist.

“I still have a real love for the landscape,” Gregoire continued. “But the porch paintings are like an itch that won’t go away.”